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48 DID ADVOCATES TO ELIMINATE GSEs ENGAGE IN A CONFLICT OF INTEREST? Some in the industry have initiated a charge to eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and take over the mortgage industry—and at the forefront of that charge is a group of high-level industry professionals that has moved back and forth between the public and private sectors since the housing crisis in 2008, according to a report from the New York Times by Gretchen Morgenson on Monday morning. e Times conducted an investigation of "lobbying records, legal filings, and internal emails and memorandums, as well as housing officials' calendars and White House and Treasury visitor logs" that documented the big banks' quiet push to remove the two giant government-sponsored enterprises and grab their share of a residential mortgage market that totals about $5.7 trillion—suggesting a conflict of interest perpetrated by some of the country's foremost and high-profile housing policy specialists who were instrumental in proposing a series of recommendations to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Michael Berman, who served as Chairman of the Mortgage Bankers' Association from October 2010 to October 2011 and then later worked as a Senior Adviser to then- HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan from November 2012 to December 2013, has led that charge, according to the New York Times. Berman subsequently recruited David Stevens, a former HUD Assistant Secretary and Federal Housing Administration Commissioner, to serve as President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association. Stakeholders in the mortgage industry question whether or not a takeover by Wall Street banks would help the industry. Some say not only would it not help the industry, but it would be harmful. According to the New York Times: "For all the problems associated with Fannie and Freddie, some housing experts say, allowing the nation's largest banks to assume greater control of the mortgage market would most likely increase costs for borrowers. It would also reduce participation and competition from smaller lenders, and could imperil taxpayers because of the potential for even greater bailouts for financial institutions that Washington considers too important to be allowed to fail." Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required a combined $187.5 taxpayer bailout in 2008 when the nation's housing system collapsed, at which time they were seized by the government and placed in conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Soon after the bailout, Berman—who at the time was the vice chairman of commercial real estate lender and management firm CW Capital—was chosen to lead the charge to privatize the nation's housing finance system, which in 2008 was in disarray, according to e Times. e Obama Administration's answer to the problem of the broken home finance system was to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with new mortgage guarantors backed by private capital. Berman created a council that was largely comprised of large banks and mortgage insurers, e Times.reported.